Horizontal kinetic energy analysis of tropical transition simulations with the WRF and HARMONIE-AROME models

Abstract

Four tropical transition (TT) events in the North Atlantic basin are simulated with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and the HARMONIE-AROME (HAR) models to study the main features of the horizontal kinetic energy (HKE) spectra of these kinds of high-energetic atmospheric system. Though most of the times similar results are obtained with both models, HAR shows a more intense filtering and numerical dissipation, whereas WRF tends to represent overenergized spectra in the synoptic scale and especially at smaller wavelengths. Predictability is dissimilar for the four TTs studied due to the different spectral curve slope obtained for each case, ranging from unlimited to very poor predictability at synoptic scale.